The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to olfactory perception and, more particularly, but not exclusively, to a method and a system for determining olfactory perception signature.
Odors are complex mixtures of chemical species, and so contain many constituent molecules. The biological olfactory system is a remarkable sensor having many olfactory cells or odorant receptors, but not very many different types of olfactory cells. The characterization of a scent or odor is typically through the combined response of many of the receptors.
Because any two individuals differ by ˜30% of their olfactory receptor subtype genome, this renders a potentially unique nose for each person. If one could capture this uniqueness with a perceptual test, a sort of perceptual olfactory fingerprint, this should then be informative on the underlying individual olfactory receptor subtype genome. The notion of a psychophysical test informing on underlying genes is of course well known from vision where color blindness charts inform about genes coding for different opsins in the retina.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,558,322 teaches methods and kits for determining olfactory perception. A test person's olfactory perception is evaluated and then determined by first providing the test subject with a palette of varying odors and fragrances, and then having that person describe, in full detail, each scent sample.
Background art includes Milinski M & Wedekind C (2001) Behav Ecol 12(2):140-149.